which_chick | (no subject)

I woke up to sounds of gunfire in the forest today. It's the first day of rifle deer season here in Pennsylvania, and a good time should be had by all. Personally, I'm in favor of people gunning down Bambi.

Don't give me that tree-hugger claptrap about evil, lantern-jawed, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing hunters until you've come and looked, really looked, at the woods where I live. Yes, the woods are beautiful. Yippee. Now look again. Do you see the browse line? That's because every scrap of edible material under four and a half feet high has been eaten by the deer. Have you noticed the total lack of undergrowth, the way the woods are barren of habitat for small, nongame animals like songbirds? Would you like to speculate on what that does for the land's carrying capacity and species diversity? How's your grip on forest regeneration? I'm sure you've noticed that the only damn things growing under five feet tall are striped maple and hay-scented ferns -- everything else gets eaten off by the damn wood goats. You do see, right? Right? Or are you too fucking busy hugging the trees to see the problems with them?

Bambi is not an entirely benign denizen of the forests.

I'm sure you've driven along Oregon Road through the state forest and seen the eight-foot fence around some of the clearcut. I bet you noted with interest that it was clearly labled "Deer Exclusion Fence" and that the sign had a small explanation to tell you just what that meant. You were curious, so you read, only to discover that Pennsylvania's fucking woods WILL NOT grow back anymore unless they are fenced to keep deer out -- the deer eat all the baby trees until there is nothing left but striped maple and hay-scented ferns. Bit of an eye-opener there, innit?

The hardcore no-death-for-bambi people are like "You can relocate the deer!" Bullshit. There are millions of deer in Pennsylvania. Neighboring states have similar deer-population problems, so we'd be straining our state finances to airlift the damn things elsewhere... or we can let people gun 'em down, remove the corpses.. AND pay us for the pleasure of doing so. The Bambi-has-rights cohort says stuff like "Birth control for bambi!" Uh. Again. We can institute an expensive, difficult program or we can let people gun 'em down, remove the corpses, and PAY US to do that.

There is another way, but historically people have resisted that way even more than they've resisted the hunter idea. We could get some top-of-the-line predators back in the state, ones that can take down a deer, and let them run unmolested. They will, of course, also prey on livestock, housepets, and the occasional person, but that's the price of having a natural balance. People don't like the idea of things in the woods that could eat them, so the predator idea doesn't ever make any headway.

So, we have deer season. Get over it.